When his father dies suddenly of a heart attack, Ellias, an up-and-coming Parisian fashion designer, is forced to return home only to discover secrets so horrifying they threaten to drag him from his gilded pedestal.
Ellias Barnès (Marc-André Grondin) is only 30, but he’s already the artistic director of the Maison Orsini, one of Paris’ most prestigious fashion houses. His father’s death forces him, as the lone heir, to return home to Canada to tidy up the estate of a man he’s all but forgotten. But there is an eerie ambiance to his father’s nondescript home and odd neighbors, and his discoveries turn his impassive duties into a living nightmare. Director Xavier Legrand’s The Successor is at once a searing family drama and a terrifying horror epic.
“Highly effective both as a claustrophobic thriller and a jarring confrontation of what-makes-a-man.” –Fionnuala Halligan, Screen Daily
Content advisory: violence, themes of abuse